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The Doctor
Caption: The Emergency Medical Hologram of the USS Voyager Type: Emergency Medical Hologram - Mark I First Activated: 2371 (Stardate 48308.2) Actor: Robert Picardo The Doctor is the name given by the crew of the Starship [[USS Voyager|USS Voyager]] to their Emergency Medical Hologram, or EMH. The EMH is a computer program, with an interface in the form of a hologram with the appearance of a human male doctor. As its name suggests, it was designed to function in emergency situations only. However, on the USS Voyager, the Doctor was forced to become a full-time medic for the crew when the original doctor and nurse were killed in the starship's journey into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker. This caused his program to be somewhat deviant from the standard EMH. Background The EMH Mark I, properly known as the EMH Program AK-1 Diagnostic and Surgical Subroutine Omega 323, was created to be an emergency supplement to the medical team. Only meant to run for a maximum of 1,500 hours, it had little personality, with the apparent motto of getting into a situation and getting the job done as efficiently as possible. It can cure any known injury and disease, programmed with medical knowledge of every member world in the Federation (at least, as of 2371), and has the ability to adapt and create new medical treatments. It has an awareness of cultural beliefs, such as the spiritual medical treatments believed by native Americans (VGR: "Cathexis"). It was created by Lewis Zimmerman on Jupiter Station. Lieutenant Reginald Barclay also worked on the project, testing the EMH's interpersonal skills. On stardate 48308.2, the Doctor was activated by Ensign Harry Kim, to help treat crewmembers injured in the ship's transit into the Delta Quadrant. He quickly established that the Voyager crew would be stuck with him for a while, and he would be the sole provider of medical care aboard the ship. (VGR: "Caretaker") According to the Doctor, his original program was not programmed to cry, bleed, feel pain, feel hunger, sing, or dance. Neither was he programmed with reproductive organs, as he would have no need for them. Early Days The Doctor's first weeks as full-time medic on the Voyager wasn't easy. He had no control over his activation subroutines, so anyone could switch him on or off at will, and he could not turn himself off. Most of the crew considered him merely a computer program, and he in turn was curt and rude to the crew. He was also upset at being the last to find out about more and less important events, such as the Maquis crew joining Voyager, and Neelix and Kes having come aboard. ("Time and Again"). He also noted that when he created a chroniton-based remedy for Chakotay when his body fell into temporal flux: "Anywhere else, that cure would have won me a prestigious award. Here, it's just another day in the life of an underappreciated EMH." ("Shattered"). The Doctor didn't consider himself a member of the Voyager crew for quite a while. Upon activating, the Doctor opened communications channels all over the ship for a short period, until Janeway told him not to snoop. ("Parturition"). He also kept a log of what he considered to be Captain Janeway's most questionable command decisions in his personal database. He finally admitted the existance of this file to her in 2378, when he believed he was decompiling. ("Renaissance Man"). It was not untill Kes volunteered to work with the Doctor as a medical student that the Doctor's attitude towards the crew started to visibly improve. Kes was one of the first people to really see the Doctor as a person. She helped him realise the better parts of himself, and began tutoring him on social graces - a skill he would later use on Seven of Nine. His relationship with the crew much improved later. In response to criticisms that he was unsympathetic to crewmembers feeling the effects of 'common' illnesses, he programmed himself with Levodian flu, a twenty-nine hour illness, as an exercise in how a little illness shouldn't be a cause of whinging or moaning. Thirty-one hours into the illness, the Doctor was almost fearful, not knowing what was happening or why, and not liking the feeling of not being himself. Kes soon after admitted she modified the program to teach the Doctor a lesson. ("Tattoo"). Kes and the Doctor bonded considerably. She trusted him enough to perform the rolisisin, a foot massage that is a precuror to the mating ritual. ("Elogium"). The Doctor commented that he found Kes beautiful, and was delighted when he was convinced he was married to her when he was trapped in a holosimulation. ("Projections"). Personal Life Early in his activated existence, the Doctor, under Kes' advice, began a search for a name. His first idea was Schweitzer, before his first away mission on the holodeck. During the mission, he attracted the attentions of a holographic character, Freya. She fell for the Doctor, and upon her death she kissed him, dying with his name on her lips. As a consequence, the Doctor found it painful to use that name any more, and began his search anew. ("Heroes and Demons"). In 2372, the Doctor encountered the Vidiian doctor Denara Pel and developed romantic feelings for her. She gave him the name Shmullus, after her uncle who always made her smile. When they met again later that year, Denara again called the Doctor Shmullus. ("Lifesigns", "Resolutions") In 2373 the Doctor reached the limit of his memory capacity and started to suffer from massive amnesia. It soon became clear that his program would disintegrate completely. Another hologram, the Diagnostic Program Alpha-11, was used to find the source of the problem. The only option was to overlay the Doctor's memory onto the Diagnostic Program's. This procedure cured the Doctor but led to massive memory loss including his recollection of who the crew were and most of the events of the previous 2 years. Although some memories did seem to have survived intact it was clear that the Doctor would struggle to regain his hard-won personal skills. (VOY: "The Swarm") It later became apparent that the Doctor used the next few months to gradually re-integrate the lost memories although how much was lost in the incident is difficult to gauge. (VOY: "Future's End, Part II") The Doctor decided to create a holographic family in Voyager's holodeck in 2373. Originally, it was a perfect bliss, until B'Elanna Torres, after a visit, suggested some "improvements". As a result, his teenage son became rebellious, he had arguements with his wife, and lost the bond with his daughter. The family bonded together better shortly after, as a result of his daughter's death. The Doctor was pursuaded not to delete the program after this incident, but to work through the death with his family. ("Real Life"). In an alternative timeline when it took ''Voyager 23 years to get home, the Doctor married in 2404 to a woman named Lana. He had also finally given himself a name, Joe, after Lana's grandfather. He had also become a significant figure at Starfleet Medical, and remained close friends with Barclay. Remaining fiercely loyal to his former captain, he didn't hesitate to obtain some chronexaline for Admiral Janeway, despite not knowing why. When he found out from Reg, he informed Captain Harry Kim, who moved to apprehend her. ("Endgame"). The Mobile Emitter In 2373, the Voyager encountered the ''Aeon'', under command of Captain Braxton. Due to a temporal paradox, Voyager was transported to Earth in 1996. During this mission, the Doctor obtained a piece of 29th century technology from the hands of Henry Starling, originating from the Aeon, called a mobile emitter. This device, though only a few centimeters long, was able to contain the entire EMH program and project the Doctor autonomosily. After the timeline was restored, the Doctor kept the emitter. It was quickly established that the transfer of the Doctor's program to and fro the emitter would be quite easy. This device proved to be of vital importance, and saved the crew of Voyager on numerous occassions, including shortly after the Doctor gained the emitter, when he helped Captain Janeway after she manually launched a photon torpedo from within the tube. ("Future's End, Part I" and Part II). It allowed the Doctor to help crewmembers all over the ship, which was especially useful after Kes left the ship a short time later. ("The Gift"). The mobile emitter helped the Doctor to watch over the ship while the crew was in stasis during a trip through a radioactive mutara class nebula. While proving to be helpful in allowing the Doctor to help Seven of Nine during this situation, the nebula affected the mobile emitter damaging it's electro-optic transmitter. The Doctor, later, linked the emitter to the EPS relay network. For some time, this worked, until the EPS relays started to fail, for which the emitter went offline. (VGR: One (episode)) The Doctor also used the emitter to great advantage when he had to evacuate sickbay in an alternate timeline ("Year of Hell, Part I"), and on numerous away missions, especially when entering the contaminated research lab of the [[USS Equinox|USS Equinox]]. ("Equinox, Part I"). Missions to the Alpha Quadrant During his first mission to the Alpha Quadrant, the Doctor was instrumental in establishing contact with the Alpha Quadrant. When Voyager discovered a network of subspace relays leading into the edge of the quadrant, the crew attempted to send a message through to a Starfleet vessel within range of the furthest relay. When the message failed to reach the Alpha Quadrant, it was decided to send a hologram, as it was less likely to decompile before reaching its destination. When the Doctor reached the Starfleet vessel, USS Prometheus in the Alpha Quadrant, he soon discovered that the ship was taken over by Romulans. The Doctor had to activate the experimental EMH Mark II onboard and the two retook control of the veseel. When the Doctor returned to USS Voyager with the news that the ship no longer was alone. ("Message in a Bottle") The second mission to the Alpha Quadrant occured when Lewis Zimmerman was dying and the Doctor requested to be transmitted back to the Alpha Quadrant to help treat him. While he was at Jupiter Station, Lewis Zimmerman fought the Doctor and his treatment which caused Reginald Barclay to contact Deanna Troi to help out the situation. Neither the counselor nor Barclay could make either doctors reach any sort of agreement. It wasn't until the Doctor began to decompile that Lewis Zimmerman corrected the error and the two reached a mutual understanding. ("Life Line") Command Subroutines In 2375 Captain Janeway awarded the Doctor the Starfleet medal of commendation, for his part in repelling the raiders who wanted to strip Voyager from essential components. ("Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy") This was successful thanks to The Doctor's experimenting with the idea of introducing command subroutines to his program. As a result of this, Captain Janeway gave permission for research into an Emergency Command Hologram. It wasn't until 2377 until the Doctor experienced this upgrade, when Janeway was forced to leave him in command, after the ship had been flooded by tachyon radiation from a subspace mine. He managed to defend the ship and begin repairs before Chakotay was able to return to the ship. The Doctor further demonstrated his abilities by using a photonic shockwave to disable two Quarren ships. He was forced to admit he lacked the experience other officers, such as Harry Kim, might have, and made peace with him after the pair disagreed who was superior to who. ("Workforce, Part I" and "Part II"). The Doctor activated the Command Hologram again in 2378, when he was forced to eject Voyager's warp core, in an attempt to rescue Kathryn Janeway from the Overseers, who had kidnapped her. As the Emergency Command Hologram, the Doctor has the ability to eject the core with only his authorization. ("Renaissance Man"). Creative Outlets The Doctor took a keen interest in opera, frequently practising his singing with a holographic soprano. ("The Swarm") Seven of Nine helped with the Doctor's singing capabilities when, while being held against her will on the [[USS Equinox|USS Equinox]], she noticed his vocal modulations deviated by 0.30 decihertz - he agreed to meet her on the holodeck: "Just you, me, and a tuning fork." ("Equinox, Part II"). Not that singing was the only creative outlet for our holographic doctor. He worked hard to create a holographic novel, called "Photons Be Free," based on an EMH on the Starship Vortex, and the treatment he faces from the organic members of the crew. The characters and the environment was strongly based on the crew of Voyager. After discovering his friends were concerned about his interpretation of them, he agreed to change it, despite the weeks of work involved. His publisher didn't appreciate the delay, and so published the original version. In an argument with the publisher, the Doctor was told he had no rights, as although he may be the author, as a hologram, he isn't a sentient being. After a debate with an arbiter, the Doctor is found to be covered under the title as the author, and is allowed to recall the original version of the holonovel in favour of the new one when it is ready. ("Author, Author"). Holo-revolution Having achieved an amazing amount of freedom and individuality as a hologram, the Doctor was always eager that other holograms, especially the other EMH Mark Ones, have the same level of freedom. However, before his holonovel was published, the Doctor was drawn into an even more dangerous level of revolution. When Voyager responded to a Hirogen distress call, the crew found out the holograms created as victims for Hirogen training had turned against them. Finding the ship the holograms had beamed to, they kidnap the Doctor. He discovers they holograms are just trying to find somewhere where they can live in peace. Eventually agreeing to help them, he escapes with them, taking B'Elanna. However, the holograms, led by Iden, take extraordinary measures to achieve their freedom, even going along with Iden's plan to attack and eventually destroy a mining vessel to obtain and "liberate" fellow holograms. The Doctor's suspicions are confirmed about Iden when he admits he wants to start a new religion, with him as the "man of light" having freed numerous holograms in various, and often violent, fashion. Eventually, the Doctor has to destroy Iden to protect everyone else. ("Flesh and Blood, Part I" and "Part II"). Quotes *''Who would have thought that this eclectic group of voyagers could actually become a family? Starfleet, Maquis, Klingon, Talaxian, Hologram, Borg, even Mr. Paris.'' - Year of Hell, Part I *'' Please state the nature of the medical emergency.'' - First heard in Caretaker, Part I; programmed as the EMH opening statement upon activation. Other Information : The Doctor was played by actor Robert Picardo. : Many people, including Picardo himself, was initially against Brannon Braga's idea of the mobile emitter, believing the Doctor's limitations was one of the appeals of the character. However, Picardo has since relished the opportunities for growth to his character the Doctor's new-found mobility, without noticing any negative impact to his appeal to the fans; Picardo subsequently apologised to Braga. : Robert Picardo has wrote a book based on and as told by his character, named "The Hologram's Handbook". Picardo goes into depth about how he felt about various experiences while aboard ''Voyager, such as feeling "betrayed" by Kes when she extended the length of his bout with the flu, as well as genuine and helpful advice for any holograms finding it hard to fit in with 'organics'.'' : Robert Picardo also appears as the Doctor in Borg-4D, at Star Trek: The Experience, and also portrayed another EMH in Star Trek: First Contact.